Posted by yxibow on March 8, 2007, at 2:07:07
In reply to Re: fat fat fat, posted by alienatari on March 7, 2007, at 19:37:31
> My BMI is 27. I am overweight.
>
> > Chris you're not fat you told me your height and weight and they are just right. Love Phillipa
>
>This is the reason why I said to do your BMR, your basal metabolic rate. There are -LIMITATIONS- to the BMI. For example, it does not take into count any muscle mass you have. And muscle weighs more than fat, more than twice as dense.
Even when you're sleeping, you are using your basal metabolic rate. You're just not using it as much as if you were awake and just sitting in a chair and doing nothing. It's probably a 2:1 or 1.5:1 difference, give or take. There are 1440 minutes in a day and you probably burn at least half a calorie per minute.
So calculate your BMRe.g.
http://health.discovery.com/tools/calculators/basal/basal.html
slightly more advanced
http://www.reply42.com/metabolism/index.html
(from Wikipedia)
These are the calories you need to sustain your body weight. If you do not eat this amount, for the average person, just by doing so, even if you do not exercise, you will start to lose weight because you are not keeping up with your body. Depending on your situation you may start to lose muscle first (not good) or your body may dig into its fat resources (better). This is known in plain english as fasting.
Now I know you and I as well struggle against metabolic change from medication. This is why I made a very sharp and conservative deduction of 30% from your BMR. That would make the average male down from 2000 calories to sustain per day to 1400. And I know that would be very hard to maintain as a diet. It would be rigorous. So thats where mild exercise comes in. If you walk, or jog, or go to the gym or do whatever pleases you on a mostly daily basis for 30-60 minutes, you will add on to this 1400 some leeway per day, say 200 calories burned. So you can keep to a diet of 1600 and if you eat less than 1600 then you will lose weight. But I may be overestimating -- maybe it is only affecting your BMR by 20%. So recalculate, etc.It takes about 3500 calories to burn a pound of fat, and a realistic weight loss program would entail 1 to a maximum of 3 pounds of fat per week. Usually on the lesser side. Crash diets or inconsistent burning will lead to possible disappointment, like where I am stuck in the gym at the moment, I don't have the schedule I used to, I used to go daily but I did less, now I go less often and do more, but then you want to eat. You can't borrow one day's calories for the next, it doesn't quite work that way.
You generally want to keep your pulse at a certain rate above your standard resting pulse while exercising, too much and you're out of the fat burning zone, or so they say. I don't know the exact calclulations on that one. But let's not worry about that for now. Just get your maintenance calories, subtract a bit, and see what you're eating in calories per day approximately from the box of food label to estimations at the USDA web site for food. They have thousands of things. Its quite fascinating
http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/
I hope that helps. Think on the positive!-- tidings
Jay
poster:yxibow
thread:738912
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070302/msgs/739133.html